Most Significant Change
A participatory evaluation technique that collects stories of change and uses structured discussion to decide what changes matter most and why.
Davies and Dart / participatory evaluation field
This page is a plain-English practice summary. It attributes the source field and avoids presenting the framework as Positively Devious intellectual property.
What this framework helps with
- learning from lived experience
- surfacing values behind impact judgements
- bringing young people's stories into evaluation carefully
Three questions it helps teams ask
- What changed, and why does it matter?
- Who decides which changes are significant?
- How are stories protected and used respectfully?
How to use it in youth and community work
Use Most Significant Change as a lens for better decisions, not as a script. Start with the local context, invite the people affected by the work into the interpretation, and turn the framework into practical questions, design choices and learning habits.
For Positively Devious, this framework matters because it helps explain one part of the wider conditions around positive deviance: the relationships, opportunities, skills, systems and power arrangements that make uncommon positive outcomes more likely to be noticed and learned from.
What to watch out for
- stories need consent and ethical handling
- do not use individual stories as proof of average impact
- selection discussions should be transparent